Sexual Orientation:
Binaries and Definition Problems

Words used to represent homosexually
oriented individuals have been adjectives such as homosexual, bisexual,
gay, and queer, preceding words such as man, male, female, adolescent,
sexual orientation, etc.. To help the public understand the concept of
"sexual orientation," the American Psychological Association (1999)
made available an apparently research based definition:

Sexual Orientation is
an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual or affectional attraction to another
person... Sexual orientation exists along a continuum that ranges from
exclusive homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality and includes various
forms of bisexuality. Bisexual persons can experience sexual, emotional
and affectional attraction to both their own sex and the opposite sex.
Persons with a homosexual orientation are sometimes referred to as gay
(both men and women) or as lesbian (women only). Sexual orientation is
different from sexual behavior because it refers to feelings and self-concept.
Persons may or may not express their sexual orientation in their behaviors.

This current definition of sexual orientation
is based on a biological gender binary which has produced the words "homosexual"
for same-sex attractions, "heterosexual" for opposite sex attractions,
and "bisexual" for varying degrees of attractions to either gender. As
a rule, however, sexual orientation has been perceived in a binary way,
but an increasing number of professionals have been challenging this perception
(Note 1). One
was to be either heterosexual (often meaning "normal") or homosexual ("abnormal"),
with bisexuality being ignored or condemned because it apparently should
not exist (Note 2).
Not long ago, homosexual individuals were also decreed to be "mentally
disordered" by organizations such as
The American Psychiatric Association
and The American Psychological Association. The removal of this
politically motivated label occurred in 1973-4 after many protests by the
ones perceiving themselves to be defined and targeted for abuse by these
organizations of mental health professionals. Many self-identified homosexual
individuals did not agree with the "mental disorder" attribute, and neither
did a significant number of professionals (Bayer,
1981).

These definitions,
categories, and related labels, however, were not always so, as asserted
by Michel Foucault (1976)
and as strongly emphasized in "The Invention of Homosexuality"
(Katz, 1995):
the words "homosexual" and "heterosexual" were invented at the end of the
19th century, and heterosexuality was perceived to be abnormal until the
1930s. Although bisexuality is often spoken about in terms of "bisexualities,"
as implied in the above APA definition, the words "homosexualities" (Bell
and Weinberg, 1978), "heterosexualities," and "asexualties" should
also be used given the diversity of human sexualities documented to have
existed over time (Dorais,
1994); Note 2).
On the basis of this knowledge of human sexualities, Dorais therefore warned
against potentially serious problems stemming from current reductionist
definitions for "sexual orientation" generally used to select study samples
by researchers exploring genetic associations for homosexuality. One result
of this research, according to Dorais, would be the likely production of
a bad piece of science fiction.

The "definition" problem in genetic
research was highlighted by Billings (1993)
in his examination of methodological problems related to various types
of genetic research related to homosexuality:

[Although] traditionally
genetics has been most successful in explaining dichotomous traits, sexual
orientation is a continuous characteristic of human populations. Males
and females can be defined as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual
or otherwise. The range of behaviours within any two groups created for
research purposes will either reflect selection (and thus not be representative),
or will overlap substantially... Thus, it may be impossible to conduct
research on homosexuality using genetic methods, or to genetically analyze
any human characteristic, when the studied traits cannot be reliably ascertained
in a large number of individuals, across a broad range of environments
(p. 20).

Given this highly
problematic situation associated with human sexualities, as well as other
problems, Billings' conclusion was prophetic and congruent with Hamer
et al.'s 1993 highly publicized results of the so-called "gay gene"
supposedly located in the X-linked DNA segment. "This site will likely
be eliminated as the location for the 'gay gene' by further experimentation,
conducted on different subjects, by other interested researchers" (p. 21).
Within two years, information supporting Billings' informed conclusion
was reported by Canadian researchers (Rice
et al., 1995; Guide,
1995;) at the same time that the Hamer team published a second study
apparently replicating earlier results (Hu,
et al. 1995). The Canadian study (Rice
et al., 1999) was finally published with considerable media coverage
given to the results negating the "X-linked DNA segment" hypothesis.

Many reports also emphasized the
highly negative implications for the postulated "gay gene" that many gay-identified
males believed to exist (Chamberlain,
1999). Over the years, comments such as "I have been gay ever since
I can remember" have been endlessly repeated to justify "essential" thinking,
but I have also been French Canadian ever since I can remember, none of
it being biological, except for having a biological system which made the
acquisition of my cultural attributes possible. By 1999, however, papers
were still being published such as Rahman (1999)
which emphasized that there was considerable evidence that gay males were
more like females, all based on unreplicated research results, and that
the research results of the Dean Hamer research team offered a good explanation
for this phenomenon. No one has noted, however, that if gay males are more
like females, would this not imply that two such males in a relationship
are therefore more like a third gender and very similar, and that such
relationships may not work if the Bem (1996)
theory - Exotic becomes erotic: a developmental theory of sexual
orientation - is correct?

A significant
problem with the current world view that "100% heterosexuality" is the
majority "sexual orientation" is the exceptionally common manifestations
of bisexuality in the Ancient World (Cantarella,
1992). In this respect, the Ancient Greek practice of pederasty is
of special significance. In a certain social class of boys, all of them
were expected to have loving relationships with older males who were available
to certainly enjoy their more than "sexual" relationships with boys. However,
some commentators have suggested otherwise, indicating that the boys may
not have enjoyed these relationships. "In the case of classical Greek practice
there is a strong current of scholarship which sees the same-sex relations
as pretty well universal in the male population, but limited in time and
context: the relic of an initiation rite. (One detects a sense that being
an initiation rite somehow makes homosexuality acceptable -- boys will
be boys, and moreover, they'll get over it!)" (Thorp,
1992, p. 59).

This highlighted thought was nonetheless
contradicted by Thorp's citations indicating that, as a rule, love without
a hint of abuse was a major attribute in these relationships, and the well
known Sacred Band of Thebes illustrates this fact (Carpenter,
1917) and also challenges the idea that these highly venerated "love"
relationships were
just an initiation rite. The younger males in
these relationships were often ready for battle; thus not being the often
assumed highly vulnerable and naive boys, and they certainly were not the
equivalent of the modern "feminine" stereotype gay male (containing some
truth) reflecting the 20th century professional and social belief that
homosexual males are inverts, meaning "like women" (Ellis,
1906; Hekma,
1994). This belief, often propagated at the end of the nineteenth century
by influential effeminate homosexual males such as Magnus Hirschfeld and
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (Hekma,
1994), then became the rule in the American military by the early 1940s
(Purkiss, 1997),
and it continued to be taught well into the 1960s as the title of Judd
Marmor's 1965 book indicates: Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of
Homosexuality.

The purpose of Thorp's 1992 paper
was to argue that, in addition to the universal expression of male homosexuality
in the form of pederasty in Ancient Greece, there were apparently some
males who preferred other males all their lives, and they were perceived
to have accept a role "analog[ous] with the role of women in copulation"
(p. 61). Given this perception, it is possible that these men were similar
to present day transsexual males and, if this applies given the rarity
of these males, they should probably not be called "homosexual." Later,
I will address this common perceptual link between modern homosexual males
(males sexually attracted to other males) and males having a high degrees
of femininity, but an important realization must be made at this point.
On the basis of the Ancient Greece fact of life for male citizens, it is
apparent that human males have the potential to not only greatly enjoy
same-gender sexual activity, but they may also experience great love for
another male in association with sexual desires.

Some individuals today also appear
to have acquired this knowledge as implied in a report on some individuals
by Kenji Yoshino, the author of the paper The Epistemic Contract of
Bisexual Erasure:

Some people have this
really utopian vision of bisexuality: Twenty years from now, we're all
just going to wake up and realize that we're all bisexual (Bass,
1999).